11 ms·

I lived in a flat in England in the early 2000s which kept getting letters from the BBC saying we didn't have a TV licence. The letters were sometimes more thre

by agurk 7y ago

I lived in a flat in England in the early 2000s which kept getting letters from the BBC saying we didn't have a TV licence. The letters were sometimes more threatening for a period, then sometimes more reconciliatory. They were also running TV adverts at the time claiming they had detector vans about, and if you didn't have a licence you'd be caught. I did some research at the time, and it seemed that evidence from a detector van had never been submitted as evidence in court cases for those without a licence. It didn't take long to realise in the age of databases, it's easier just to send out scary letters to all address without a registered licence and hope there will be some 'conversion rate'. The effort required to actually chase on this seemed disproportional to the benefits. And for those wondering, I did have a licence, it's just the address the BBC had for the flat was subtly different to the one on the bit of paper. I had hoped that they would follow up with a more detailed investigation, so I could see how it worked and ask about the vans, but they never did.

tantalor 7y ago
> evidence from a detector van had never been submitted How could it be, if the mechanism behind the detector is not made public? Prosecutor: This machine says you are guilty. Defendant: How does that machine work? Prosecutor: You aren't allowed to know. Defendant: ??? Judge: Case dismissed.
- stronglikedan 7y ago
  Not the US.
  - rolph 7y ago
    yup even brushing your teeth and using mouthwash is not a stymie, often this is viewed as destruction/interference with evidence, if a cop can discover empty aloholic containers.
    - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
      Brushing your teeth doesn't affect breathalyzer readings at all. Alcoholic mouthwash can give false positives for up to 20 minutes, and cops are supposed to wait and try again for that reason; you've got a good shot at getting it thrown out if they don't.
      - rolph 7y ago
        around my parts, it would be tampering with evidence even if there is no proof or indicator that evidence of a crime existed, before "tampering" the brushing teeth and mouthwash is simply part of a power commuters hygene routine. in NY for example people use the time spent at traffic lights to do all sorts of things.
        PhasmaFelis 7y ago
        That's fucked up, I'm sorry. In most places in the US, cops would ignore it, because it doesn't do anything. Breathalyzers detect metabolized alcohol vapor from your lungs; nothing you can put in your mouth will stop that as long as there's alcohol in your bloodstream and you're still breathing.
        rolph 7y ago
        oh dont be sorry its not your fault and interjections are valid, just to get things on track with the thread, this is about circumventing an authorities ability to detect an offence, and some authorities will assume innoccuous behaviour is evidence probable cause or reasonable suspicion, basically where im sitting, any circumstance you create that causes an investigation to go off script, can be interference if you intended to do it regardless of what you are trying to accomplish.
      - soneil 7y ago
        Here breathlyzers aren't evidence, they're probable cause. To be admissible they either need you to accept the result, or go custodial for a blood test.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Sounds like typical legal stances on breathalyzers, speed cameras and red light cameras.
  - tantalor 7y ago
    A bad breathalyzer can be challenged in court as "not scientifically reliable". https://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/22/judge-finds-breathalyzer-not-scientifically-reliable.html https://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/22/ju...
    - eitland 7y ago
      Around here they are just used as part of a first step I think: if you fail it you'll be asked to go for a alcohol blood test.
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        And around here, they’ll just take you to the station for a more advanced breathalyzer test (Canada). Even though the police can compel a blood sample through a hospital, they don’t bother because the law doesn’t require it for a conviction.
    - smsm42 7y ago
      A dog though is considered always reliable: https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/supreme-court-alert-by-a-trained-or-certified-drug-dog-normally-provides-probable-cause/ https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/supreme-court-alert-by-a-t... So maybe they should have used TV-sniffing dogs instead? :)
      - ascagnel_ 7y ago
        Subtly different situation -- a dog sniff is only an indicator of probable cause, while a breathalyzer may be presented as evidence of guilt.
      - tonyarkles 7y ago
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  That's what parallel construction is for!
  - steve19 7y ago
    Its the opposite. The TV vans were the parallel construction, they couldn't have worked but they were known to send licensing officers to look through peoples windows during prime TV watching hours.
sofaofthedamned 7y ago
As a child in the 80s I remember my family being scared of this van even though it probably never existed. Because of this my mum got a pay TV instead which we had to put 50p coins in periodically that paid for both the TV rental and the license fee.
- exhilaration 7y ago
  You had a coin-operated TV...? At home...? Did someone come regularly to collect the coins? I'm genuinely fascinated by this.
  - scandox 7y ago
    I still know people in Dublin that have coin operated electricity, though I think nearly all of them have been moved to card based systems.
    - radicalbyte 7y ago
      They had that in the mainland too. It was something which was forced on poor people and resulted in electricity prices considerably higher than they otherwise would have been. My grandparents were forced to have one. My late grandfather had PTSD from fighting in WWII and could basically never hold down a job or make a good financial decision.
    - JackFr 7y ago
      I've been to campsites where the showers are free, but the hot water requires coins. You really want to get your money's worth, but the fear of being lathered up and it going straight cold motivates you to be quick.
  - Balgair 7y ago
    I also remember the coin operated tellys. Yes, every 6 months or there abouts the coiny-telly man would come about to collect the coins. It was a real hassle, as you had to be at your flat all that day. Otherwise, the coiny-telly man would just pass you up. Thing was, the little bin that the coins fell into would fill up every 9 months or so. So, if the coiny-telly man passed you up, you'd have to ration when you could watch TV. I remember the first time my mum made this mistake and the bin got filled. My pa was so angry that he didn't get to watch Emmerdale Farm and Whizz-Bizz that night as no more would fit in the machine. Well, we never made that mistake again.
arprocter 7y ago
I believe when you buy a TV retailers are required to take down your address I bought one once and evidently they managed to typo the house number, so our neighbour down the street who didn't have a TV kept getting the 'we know you have a TV but no license threatening letters
- filoleg 7y ago
  >I believe when you buy a TV retailers are required to take down your address Is this for real? I remember thinking "dystopian as hell" when I heard about all the CCTVs in England, but this one takes the cake. I can at least see the points made by the other side of the CCTV argument, even though I very much disagree with them. Why cannot one just buy a TV in England without giving out their personal info?
  - DanBC 7y ago
    It used to be true, the law changed a while ago. The law wasn't "you must hand over your details when buying a tv", it was "you must ask for details when selling a tv". Customers were free to supply false information.
    - noir_lord 7y ago
      I did, I just change the first two letters of my postcode to another town over for all that crap.
  - badreader 7y ago
    In Israel you were used to be required to provide your equivalent of ssn upon purchase of a tv setm, so the gov would be able to charge you public tv fee. the fee was finally abolished couple years ago.
  - hogFeast 7y ago
    It is actually worse than this. They send out the letters (it often seems randomly) AND they will send someone to come to your house who will "inspect" your TV/demand entry/make threats... ...this is one of these utterly bizarre public sector things where the govt will hire a private company to chase down people (usually immigrants, unemployed, etc.) and give them a cut of whatever is looted...unsurprisingly, this has proved to be controversial in practice. I have actually heard of people who called the police because they were being harassed by these people. All so some chinless wonder from Oxbridge can get paid £200k/year commissioning dogshit documentaries about Ethiopian trance music (the BBC massively underpays for talent but employs an unfathomably large number of middle managers). I would love to see how this kind of system would work in Texas.
monkeynotes 7y ago
The ads were hugely dystopian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NmdUcmLFkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NmdUcmLFkw I am an ex-pat and as an adult I am have become quite disillusioned with the UK and glad to have gotten out a decade ago. I miss nothing about England except my friends, and I'd feel sorry for them, but they all seem mostly happy with life. Paying a license to have a TV (and it's assumed you must watch TV), opt in porn on the internet, CCTV everywhere, braying in parliament, not to mention the whole Brexit shit-show, I find little to admire about the UK.
- jrjarrett 7y ago
  I don't know where you moved to, but is the US anything admirable lately? Guess I should cross the UK off the list of places to flee to.
  - criddell 7y ago
    Don't flee, get involved and help fix things if you can!
    - notzuck 7y ago
      Yes, he should just dedicate his life to toiling away at a problem he can't make an impact on while telling his kids and wife that he's very sorry that he can't give them a significantly better standard of living because he needs to help fix England.
    - monkeynotes 7y ago
      No, I was miserable in the UK - I have better options elsewhere. I do not care enough about the UK to give it my life. The culture is locked in by hundreds of years of history, and a vast, vast majority of people like it the way it is. Staying in the UK for me is like staying in an abusive relationship or a job you hate. It made me deeply unhappy, so instead of complaining and bringing my friends down I found a life to love overseas.
      - 7y ago
smsm42 7y ago
Israel has similar system, and they regularly send scary letters to people not even owning the TV, and you have to prove it. If you don't, they could just deduct the fine from your bank account, and good luck proving anything or getting your money back, even if you never owned the TV and never watched public broadcast that TV license is supposed to pay for.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sandbags 7y ago
If memory serves from when I used to work for a retailer (some 30 years ago now) we were required to submit the name & address of anyone who rented/bought a TV. I think they just tallied this list against their database.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
We cord cut and moved away from broadcast TV round about 2000, or a little earlier, yet retained a TV. It was far, far easier to get the BBC to see sense about licence status - either not needing one, or having one and they simply messed up details on moving or whatever, than it has been with Crapita. Since the BBC were forced to outsource it, in the early 00s, we found it simply wasn't worth bothering with. They were getting it wrong about our status over 50% of the time, despite following their "prove your innocence" hoops every year or two on the website, often the same day the letter or email was received. Eventually we gave up and just let them inundate our paper recycling. They've been comically useless. I am certain after 15 years of their incompetence, Capita have been responsible for many an unsafe conviction.
_delirium 7y ago
After the stories I'd heard, I was expecting something like this, but I lived in a flat in the UK without paying for a TV license earlier this decade, and heard almost nothing from them. They sent me one letter, about six months after I moved in, saying I should pay a license fee. I returned it checking the "don't have a TV" box, and I don't recall ever getting hassled after that.

by agurk 7y ago

tantalor 7y ago

> evidence from a detector van had never been submitted How could it be, if the mechanism behind the detector is not made public? Prosecutor: This machine says you are guilty. Defendant: How does that machine work? Prosecutor: You aren't allowed to know. Defendant: ??? Judge: Case dismissed.

stronglikedan 7y ago
Not the US.
- rolph 7y ago
  yup even brushing your teeth and using mouthwash is not a stymie, often this is viewed as destruction/interference with evidence, if a cop can discover empty aloholic containers.
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    Brushing your teeth doesn't affect breathalyzer readings at all. Alcoholic mouthwash can give false positives for up to 20 minutes, and cops are supposed to wait and try again for that reason; you've got a good shot at getting it thrown out if they don't.
    - rolph 7y ago
      around my parts, it would be tampering with evidence even if there is no proof or indicator that evidence of a crime existed, before "tampering" the brushing teeth and mouthwash is simply part of a power commuters hygene routine. in NY for example people use the time spent at traffic lights to do all sorts of things.
      - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
        That's fucked up, I'm sorry. In most places in the US, cops would ignore it, because it doesn't do anything. Breathalyzers detect metabolized alcohol vapor from your lungs; nothing you can put in your mouth will stop that as long as there's alcohol in your bloodstream and you're still breathing.
        rolph 7y ago
        oh dont be sorry its not your fault and interjections are valid, just to get things on track with the thread, this is about circumventing an authorities ability to detect an offence, and some authorities will assume innoccuous behaviour is evidence probable cause or reasonable suspicion, basically where im sitting, any circumstance you create that causes an investigation to go off script, can be interference if you intended to do it regardless of what you are trying to accomplish.
    - soneil 7y ago
      Here breathlyzers aren't evidence, they're probable cause. To be admissible they either need you to accept the result, or go custodial for a blood test.
Scoundreller 7y ago
Sounds like typical legal stances on breathalyzers, speed cameras and red light cameras.
- tantalor 7y ago
  A bad breathalyzer can be challenged in court as "not scientifically reliable". https://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/22/judge-finds-breathalyzer-not-scientifically-reliable.html https://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/22/ju...
  - eitland 7y ago
    Around here they are just used as part of a first step I think: if you fail it you'll be asked to go for a alcohol blood test.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      And around here, they’ll just take you to the station for a more advanced breathalyzer test (Canada). Even though the police can compel a blood sample through a hospital, they don’t bother because the law doesn’t require it for a conviction.
  - smsm42 7y ago
    A dog though is considered always reliable: https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/supreme-court-alert-by-a-trained-or-certified-drug-dog-normally-provides-probable-cause/ https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/supreme-court-alert-by-a-t... So maybe they should have used TV-sniffing dogs instead? :)
    - ascagnel_ 7y ago
      Subtly different situation -- a dog sniff is only an indicator of probable cause, while a breathalyzer may be presented as evidence of guilt.
    - tonyarkles 7y ago
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
That's what parallel construction is for!
- steve19 7y ago
  Its the opposite. The TV vans were the parallel construction, they couldn't have worked but they were known to send licensing officers to look through peoples windows during prime TV watching hours.

sofaofthedamned 7y ago

As a child in the 80s I remember my family being scared of this van even though it probably never existed. Because of this my mum got a pay TV instead which we had to put 50p coins in periodically that paid for both the TV rental and the license fee.

exhilaration 7y ago
You had a coin-operated TV...? At home...? Did someone come regularly to collect the coins? I'm genuinely fascinated by this.
- scandox 7y ago
  I still know people in Dublin that have coin operated electricity, though I think nearly all of them have been moved to card based systems.
  - radicalbyte 7y ago
    They had that in the mainland too. It was something which was forced on poor people and resulted in electricity prices considerably higher than they otherwise would have been. My grandparents were forced to have one. My late grandfather had PTSD from fighting in WWII and could basically never hold down a job or make a good financial decision.
  - JackFr 7y ago
    I've been to campsites where the showers are free, but the hot water requires coins. You really want to get your money's worth, but the fear of being lathered up and it going straight cold motivates you to be quick.
- Balgair 7y ago
  I also remember the coin operated tellys. Yes, every 6 months or there abouts the coiny-telly man would come about to collect the coins. It was a real hassle, as you had to be at your flat all that day. Otherwise, the coiny-telly man would just pass you up. Thing was, the little bin that the coins fell into would fill up every 9 months or so. So, if the coiny-telly man passed you up, you'd have to ration when you could watch TV. I remember the first time my mum made this mistake and the bin got filled. My pa was so angry that he didn't get to watch Emmerdale Farm and Whizz-Bizz that night as no more would fit in the machine. Well, we never made that mistake again.

arprocter 7y ago

I believe when you buy a TV retailers are required to take down your address I bought one once and evidently they managed to typo the house number, so our neighbour down the street who didn't have a TV kept getting the 'we know you have a TV but no license threatening letters

filoleg 7y ago
>I believe when you buy a TV retailers are required to take down your address Is this for real? I remember thinking "dystopian as hell" when I heard about all the CCTVs in England, but this one takes the cake. I can at least see the points made by the other side of the CCTV argument, even though I very much disagree with them. Why cannot one just buy a TV in England without giving out their personal info?
- DanBC 7y ago
  It used to be true, the law changed a while ago. The law wasn't "you must hand over your details when buying a tv", it was "you must ask for details when selling a tv". Customers were free to supply false information.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    I did, I just change the first two letters of my postcode to another town over for all that crap.
- badreader 7y ago
  In Israel you were used to be required to provide your equivalent of ssn upon purchase of a tv setm, so the gov would be able to charge you public tv fee. the fee was finally abolished couple years ago.
- hogFeast 7y ago
  It is actually worse than this. They send out the letters (it often seems randomly) AND they will send someone to come to your house who will "inspect" your TV/demand entry/make threats... ...this is one of these utterly bizarre public sector things where the govt will hire a private company to chase down people (usually immigrants, unemployed, etc.) and give them a cut of whatever is looted...unsurprisingly, this has proved to be controversial in practice. I have actually heard of people who called the police because they were being harassed by these people. All so some chinless wonder from Oxbridge can get paid £200k/year commissioning dogshit documentaries about Ethiopian trance music (the BBC massively underpays for talent but employs an unfathomably large number of middle managers). I would love to see how this kind of system would work in Texas.

monkeynotes 7y ago

The ads were hugely dystopian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NmdUcmLFkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NmdUcmLFkw I am an ex-pat and as an adult I am have become quite disillusioned with the UK and glad to have gotten out a decade ago. I miss nothing about England except my friends, and I'd feel sorry for them, but they all seem mostly happy with life. Paying a license to have a TV (and it's assumed you must watch TV), opt in porn on the internet, CCTV everywhere, braying in parliament, not to mention the whole Brexit shit-show, I find little to admire about the UK.

jrjarrett 7y ago
I don't know where you moved to, but is the US anything admirable lately? Guess I should cross the UK off the list of places to flee to.
- criddell 7y ago
  Don't flee, get involved and help fix things if you can!
  - notzuck 7y ago
    Yes, he should just dedicate his life to toiling away at a problem he can't make an impact on while telling his kids and wife that he's very sorry that he can't give them a significantly better standard of living because he needs to help fix England.
  - monkeynotes 7y ago
    No, I was miserable in the UK - I have better options elsewhere. I do not care enough about the UK to give it my life. The culture is locked in by hundreds of years of history, and a vast, vast majority of people like it the way it is. Staying in the UK for me is like staying in an abusive relationship or a job you hate. It made me deeply unhappy, so instead of complaining and bringing my friends down I found a life to love overseas.
    - 7y ago

smsm42 7y ago

Israel has similar system, and they regularly send scary letters to people not even owning the TV, and you have to prove it. If you don't, they could just deduct the fine from your bank account, and good luck proving anything or getting your money back, even if you never owned the TV and never watched public broadcast that TV license is supposed to pay for.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sandbags 7y ago

If memory serves from when I used to work for a retailer (some 30 years ago now) we were required to submit the name & address of anyone who rented/bought a TV. I think they just tallied this list against their database.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

We cord cut and moved away from broadcast TV round about 2000, or a little earlier, yet retained a TV. It was far, far easier to get the BBC to see sense about licence status - either not needing one, or having one and they simply messed up details on moving or whatever, than it has been with Crapita. Since the BBC were forced to outsource it, in the early 00s, we found it simply wasn't worth bothering with. They were getting it wrong about our status over 50% of the time, despite following their "prove your innocence" hoops every year or two on the website, often the same day the letter or email was received. Eventually we gave up and just let them inundate our paper recycling. They've been comically useless. I am certain after 15 years of their incompetence, Capita have been responsible for many an unsafe conviction.

_delirium 7y ago

After the stories I'd heard, I was expecting something like this, but I lived in a flat in the UK without paying for a TV license earlier this decade, and heard almost nothing from them. They sent me one letter, about six months after I moved in, saying I should pay a license fee. I returned it checking the "don't have a TV" box, and I don't recall ever getting hassled after that.